Now Other People Can Promote Your Facebook Posts

Whether you like it or not
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 15, 2013 8:25 AM CST
Now Other People Can Promote Your Facebook Posts
This undated image provided by Facebook shows the new feature Facebook announced Oct. 3, 2012, that lets users pay to promote their posts to friends, just as advertisers do.   (AP Photo/Facebook)

Ever promoted one of your Facebook posts? Yeah, neither have we. But Facebook is apparently hoping we'll be more excited about promoting other people's thoughts, announcements, and cat photos. Yesterday it began rolling out a new feature that allows you to pay to promote your friend's posts, TechCrunch reports. And it doesn't give you any say in whether someone else can promote your post.

While the promoted post will respect privacy settings, it "could still make you look like a self-important prick," Josh Constine observes for TechCrunch. The feature is being rolled out slowly, and will initially only be available to people with fewer than 5,000 friends and subscribers. In its announcement, Facebook envisioned worthy uses for the feature, like publicizing a friend's marathon for charity. But as Constine notes, "A friend could jokingly promote an embarrassing photo of me, or my status about something bad happening to me." Despite the stigma attached to paying for post visibility, there is a decent reason to do it; Facebook only shows your average, non-promoted Facebook post to just 16% of your friends. (More Facebook stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X